


(Not) Returning

by WahlBuilder



Category: The Technomancer (Video Game)
Genre: Brotherly Love, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Military, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, set Abundance on fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-21
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-11-01 21:11:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17874926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WahlBuilder/pseuds/WahlBuilder
Summary: Sean always dreads it when his kin return.He fears for Melvin the most, because of the reason why Melvin has returned.





	1. Chapter 1

Sean always dreads it when his kin return from deployment. He fears for how Connor’s face falls before he can compose himself, how Ian presses his lips together. How his kin return used. It doesn’t matter how they behave outwardly — they are not themselves anymore, not _Sean’s_ anymore. Mother Abundance takes everything, everyone from Sean.

And he is selfish.

He dreads Melvin’s returns the most.

It has been Melvin’s second tour, and Sean remembers well in what state Mel returned from the first — but he feels this time will be worse.

It always gets worse with time.

He doesn’t go to meet Mel at the train station — nobody goes. Meeting the returning soldiers is not for the technomancers. They have no family, after all—they belong to the Corporation.

But Sean is there in his mind, as, he is sure, Ian and Connor are.

He imagines the giant worm of the train — not gleaming-fresh but matted with dust from riding for days. A crowd on the platform, people craning their necks, waiting for their loved ones. A few Politicians on a dais, a wide semicircle of empty space before them. Maybe a small orchestra. Mother Abundance loves her children.

The doors of the train cars slide open, and people start pouring out. A cheer goes up: soldiers have returned home. The orchestra plays a triumphant march. The soldiers, weary, dusted, with energy renewed from the scent of home but dazed from the noise, catch their spouses, life their kids, kiss their parents. Officers shake hands, make their way to the Politicians. Some prick makes a speech about bravery.

Mel steps out. The crowd is a bubble of silence around him, in deference to his dark gray — but soldiers smile at him, salute to him smartly and not officially, like to an older brother they’ve had a good time with…

Or maybe it goes differently. Maybe Mel is dressed in a dirty patchwork field uniform, and his hair has grown out and now hides the wires. Just another soldier, tired but relieved to be home at last. (The soldiers know him and still salute him.) Sean pulls him into a tight embrace, and Mel sighs against his neck. He’s home…

The real Melvin strides through the main hall so fast Sean barely catches the sight of him.

“Melvin!” Connor reaches after him but then drops his hand. It is unbearable.

So Sean doesn’t bear it: he gets up and follows the dark blur of Melvin’s figure. He chases Mel to the officer quarters.

The door closes right in front of him.

He knocks. “Mel. May I come in?”

“Who the fuck cares?” Something metallic rings on the floor.

“I the fuck do. Mel.”

“Suit yourself.”

The metal thing, it turn out, is Mel’s staff. Sean looks away from it, looks at Mel.

There is no triumph in him, no satisfaction, no exhaustion even. He’s freshly-shaven, and his shoulders are heaving.

The first time, it hit Sean badly how much his brother had transformed. Shoulders broader than two years prior. (Mother Abundance had taken Mel the morning after Sean’s initiation ceremony, with Sean finding out the reason for Mel’s absence only in the afternoon; he yelled at Connor.) Dark hair with an auburn tint that had lost its luster, silver threads already here and there. Something stiff, almost cruel to Mel’s mouth.

But now, Mel looks the same as the day he was shipped (they got so smashed the night before; Sean thinks he remembers crying into Mel’s shoulder, biting his lips until they bled, to not make a sound, Mel stroking his back silently).

Only the broad shoulders are heaving.

“Mel.” He holds out a hand.

Mel looks at it. His hair has definitely grown out a little. “What do you want from me?” he snaps. There is hoarseness in his throat, and his field is needling against Sean’s skin.

“Come with me.”

After a moment, Mel takes his hand, fingers very dry.

Sean leads him out of the room and down the hall, and after a few turns opens the door to his own room, closes it behind Mel.

Mel looks around, then at him. “Why the fuck are we here?”

“You can thrash my room,” he explains evenly. “There is nothing valuable here, and everyone knows I make scenes… Nobody would know _you_ did it.”

Mel’s face, his gaze are not distant — they are very much _here_ , in the moment — in his anger.

Sean keeps his expression calm. He hopes.

‘The Duel at Dawn’, the radio propaganda and bulletins have named it. Colonel Ivar Major “valiantly” died in the attack of the “raider scum”, and the battalion, some three hundred people strong, got stuck, surrounded by those thugs. They kept alive for a whole day, with no way of tearing through the hostile forces — but “the brave officers” led the “valiant charge” at dawn, and the “cowardly raiders” fled before such bravery.

 _Officers_. It was one officer, Ian got from his contacts in the Army. One Captain Melvin Mancer — or rather, Major Melvin Mancer, now. (In the Order, they don’t celebrate promotions.) The Order of Kutuzov, third class — posthumously to Colonel Ivar. No medal for a technomancer, of course.

Mel is wearing the field uniform, the short jacket dusty, a chunk on the right shoulder torn. As Sean looks him over, he notices more scratches, holes… One at the front, where the solar plexus is.

“Mel? Don’t you need to go to—”

“It’s nothing. You know me. Заживает как на собаке.”

The sudden switch of languages comes with a delay, and for a second Sean panics because he doesn’t understand what Mel is saying. Then he gets a grip on himself. “Mel, if you need—”

“They wouldn’t have let me walk if I had been bleeding out, would they.” No, but they would have let him walk as soon as he was not _actively_ bleeding out.

“Please stop snapping and interrupting me, brother,” Sean says coldly.

That seems to take Mel out of it. He closes his eyes. “Sorry.” He runs a hand through his hair — a terribly familiar gesture.

“Mel—”

“I killed him. Ivar.”

He thinks, for another second, that Mel has switched languages again (always absorbs them faster than Sean).

“You did what?”

Mel sits down on the bed. He’s heavier than Sean, as Sean knows from sparring with him, and the mattress dips under his weight.

“Fucking useless, he was. Yapped about glory the whole way, bastard. ‘Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them…’ Quoted _The Charge_ at me, can you imagine?”

Sean can’t help but smile. Mel often thinks of himself as average in many studies — but he has a good memory.

“It might have worked, against the raiders,” Sean points out carefully, pulling a chair to himself and straddling it.

Mel startled. “Raiders? Ah yes, that’s what we discussed with Major Kaja. Raiders…” His lips twist and he leans forward. “They were the Alliance clansmen, Seanek. And they weren’t friendly. I didn’t recognize the clan colors, so they must be some fringe clan. They were discussing what to do with us, no doubt, when I shot Ivar.”

Sean grows cold. If Mel is the one to breach the deal Abundance has with the Alliance…

“Mel. What did you do?”

Mel shrugs, runs a hand through his hair again. “Challenged their chief to a duel, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Sean echoes in dumb astonishment. “You, a technomancer, a mere captain, challenged…”

Mel huffs. “That is what I just said, _kotek_ , didn’t I?”

“So you dueled?”

“Naturally.” But Mel’s shoulders are tense again. “At dawn, as is the custom. Of course, both forces watched.”

The silence prickles with Mel’s charge.

“Mel,” Sean calls quietly. “What did you do?”

“Ordered the troops to open fire.”

Sean is stricken by the image: the whole clan gathered behind their chief, and Mel facing them, with the battalion behind him. The clansmen stand proud (trying to hide their worry when they realize the captain is a technomancer). And then, they are scythed by traitorously opened fire. Perfect targets.

Mel, a perfect target, too.

Sean’s gaze drops to the front of Mel’s jacket.

Mel shrugs, looks away. “At least those three bullets didn’t reach my people.”

“Melvin.”

“It’s okay, _kociątko_. A few holes, they don’t mean anything. I’m here, right? I’ll be moody for a few days, then back to normal. Should apologize to Con, though.” He presses his lips together until they go white. He doesn’t look at Sean for a long time. “Has the… matching occurred already?”

The reason, the _real_ reason why Mel has been called back. Not because he needs rest, not because he has the right to return once in a while — but… this.

“Yes,” Sean says quietly, the inside of his mouth bitter. He feels like the room is tainted with this small word. “You don’t have to, not…”

Mel gets up. “I’ll take a shower, talk with Con, report to the Great Master. I’ll be all right, _kotě_.” Mel ruffles Sean’s hair as he passes — something Sean allows only him, and leaves the room. Closing the door after himself.

Sean feels the need to break everything.


	2. Chapter 2

Life goes on as normal for a few days. Sean sees Mel in the training halls — always alone — and at the library and the dining hall (never the Chapel). Mel is never the one to socialize much.

Sean misses their ventures into the Slums. He hasn’t yet told Pinky that Mel is back, although he thinks the Vory already know.

The fragile normality, the routine only underline the abhorrent reality of what is to come for Mel.

Then, Mel disappears for a week.

Of course Sean knows why. The matchmaking process is conducted outside the Order. Discussions of it are forbidden — but in the closed society that they are, rumors and leaks are inevitable.

Sean’s studies are distracted by horrified waiting. Every few hours he goes to Mel’s room but it remains empty. The staff sits on the rack.

On the fifth day of Mel’s absence — or rather, night, Sean stays to sleep in Mel’s bed, anxious that Mel might return at night and need him and…

(He doesn’t know what he would do, what he is supposed to do. What can possibly help.)

So he stays, and the next day, too.

Mel returns in the middle of the night between the seventh and the eighth day.

Sean is on the bed, reading a datapad despite the late hour, unable to sleep and unable to focus on the reading. His mind skips sentences and ideas, when the door opens. He feels it by the rush of air and, looking from the datapad, sees a dark figure.

_“Kotek?”_

He drops the datapad onto the bed and scrambles to untangle himself from the blanket and his feet hit the cold floor.

“Mel. _Tygřík_.”

There is no light save for the light of the datapad and then even that fades, too.

He is aware of Mel’s presence only because of Mel’s field, not his movement, not even his _breathing_. The field is tightly, very tightly controlled.

What if he’s only dreaming? He reaches out…

“It is done,” Mel’s voice startles him, husky and somehow flat. Dusted, like his field uniform the day he returned. “With success.”

Sean’s mouth is dry. “Brother.”

“Since you are here, could you escort me to the showers?”

“Of course, but…”

“So if I try to kill myself, you could stop me.”

“Should I?” he asks gently. “It is your choice.”

Mel laughs — a dry sound with a click at the end, like a rifle being checked. “The only thing in which we have choice is our death — and even then, only sometimes, if we are lucky. I am no use to Abundance, am I, with my bloodline secured now. Nobody needs me…”

“ _I_ need you.” He closes his arms around Mel.

Mel doesn’t move, even his breathing is shallow.

“No,” Mel says at last into his shoulder. “I won’t give them that satisfaction — although to rob them of my experience as a field commander, of all the resources they have put into shaping me would be good. Not now. Our fathers would blame themselves.”

They go to the showers. Sean is glad that most of his kindred have no habit of late-night activities: cadets are too exhausted by training and studies, and older technomancers have the routine ingrained (Ian is a notorious exception).

Somehow, Sean expects to see some marks on Mel’s body. There are new scars — the three round marks in the middle of his back, like the Belt of Orion, — but nothing else. It feels unfair, that such a thing would be invisible. That it can’t be washed off, can’t be bandaged, can’t be _seen_.

Sean stays in the change room, floating in a state out of time — until Mel’s cry of rage and the sound of something breaking (a very _physical_ sound) startle him.

He jumps to his feet and rushes to the showers proper, skidding on cold tiles.

Mel is standing under the spray (running pink), looking at his broken, bloody right fist as though it’s something not of his own. The tiles in front of him are shattered.

Mel turns his gaze at Sean, but Sean isn’t sure he’s being seen. Then Mel blinks. “I… slipped.”

“Of course you did. It happens. You are tired.” Sean steps under the spray, his shirt soaking through right away. He pulls Mel’s carefully to his chest.

Mel cries.


End file.
